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Keynote Speakers


Werner Aeschbach-Hertig
Werner Aeschbach-Hertig is Professor at the Institute of Environmen-tal Physics of Heidelberg University. Previously he has been a research scientist at Eawag/ETH Zurich and at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. His primary expertise lies in the use of noble gases as tracers in lakes, ocean, groundwater and recently also speleo-thems. He has applied noble gases in combination with radiocarbon dating and stable isotopes to reconstruct paleotemperatures from groundwater. Another research focus is the use of environmental tracers for groundwater dating, in order to determine groundwater recharge and to support water resource management in arid regions.

Jan Dowgiałło
Jan Dowgiałło is Professor of Natural Sciences, specialized in hydroge-ology of mineral and thermal waters, author of more than hundred pub-lications. Former Chairman of the IAH Commission on Mineral and Ther-mal Waters. As expert-hydrogeologist he worked for several years with the UNDP (India) and WHO (Yemen Arab Republic). He was chairman of the all-Poland Coordinating Committee of the Solidarność Trade Union (1989-1990) and served  as Ambassador of Poland to Israel (1990-1994). Nowadays he is Chairman of the Scientific Board, Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences and member of the Commission for Hydrogeological Records, Polish Ministry of Environment.

Balázs Horváth
Balázs Horváth is a policy officer of the European Commission DG En-vironment Unit for the Protection of the Water Environment since 2008. He deals with the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and in particular the groundwater related Community legislation as well as with EU activities concerning adaptation to climate change. He previously worked for the Ministry of Environment and Water of the Republic of Hungary for six years and Hungarian environment protection and water management authorities for four years.

Bjørn Kløve
Bjørn Kløve is a full professor in water resources engineering at Univer-sity of Oulu, Finland and a part-time senior researcher at Bioforsk — Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research. He is the co-ordinator of the EC 7th FP project GENESIS on groundwater and ecosystems and he is leading the Finnish Doctoral Programme VALUE on Integrated Catchment and Water Resources Research. His research fo-cus on hydrology related to wetlands, water quality protection, ground-water and river engineering.

Maciek Lubczynski
Maciek Lubczynski is a leader of the Managing Water Scarcity research theme at the ITC Faculty of University of Twente in the Netherlands. His broad expertise in hydrogeology, hydrology, hydrogeophysics, remote sensing, numerical groundwater modeling and plant physiology allowed him to adapt various modern techniques in hydrogeology. His current scientific effort concentrates on development of new data acquisition and data integration schemas to improve reliability of groundwater models in arid and semi-arid environments. More information can be found at his resume.

Lesław Skrzypczyk
Lesław Skrzypczyk, Hydrogeologist, PhD; Deputy Director of the Polish Geological Institute — National Research Institute; Director for Hydroge-ological Survey affairs Research aspects: Groundwater assessments, protection and management; Legal aspects of protection of groundwater, implementa-tion into practice of Water Law; Identification of environmental impacts, evaluation of vulnerability and risk assessments, hydrogeological cartography.

Jonathan Smith
Jonathan Smith is a senior hydrogeologist with Shell Global Solutions based near Chester, UK, where he leads Shell’s soil and groundwater research and advocacy programmes in Europe. His work focusses on developing better approaches for preventing, assessing and managing soil and groundwater risks. Prior to joining Shell he worked in both regulation and academia and he has 18 years hydrogeological experience. He is a Visiting Professor at Sheffield University. Jonathan chairs the Sustainable Remediation Forum in the UK, which is a multi-stakeholder group developing a framework and tools for assessing the sustainability of soil and groundwater remediation strategies and techniques.

Fritz Stauffer
Fritz Stauffer is a senior scientist and lecturer in groundwater. He stu-died Rural Engineering at ETH Zurich, where he obtained his diploma in 1971. Also from ETH Zurich he received his doctorate in 1977. In 2001 he was awarded the title of Professor by ETH Zurich. His research inter-est is in flow and contaminant transport in groundwater including experi-mental techniques and mathematical modelling and stochastic modelling. Current topics are the quantification of uncertainty in the location of gro-undwater protection zones, the air injection in saturated porous media, the river-aquifer interaction, and the use of tracers in groundwater modelling.

Maciej Zalewski
Maciej Zalewski was born in 1950 in Warsaw. In 1973 he graduated from the Biology Department of the University of Lodz (ecological bio-energetics), where he also obtained the Ph.D. The D.Sc. was focused on a hierarchy of abiotic-biotic factors regulating fish community in rivers in a different climatic zones.
Leading scientist of the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme — Ecohydrology — a sub-discipline of hydrology that focuses on ecological processes occurring within the hydrological cycle and strives to utilize such processes for enhancing environmental sustainability.
Director of the International Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences — European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology under the auspices of  UNESCO, Chairman of the Department of Applied Ecology University of Lodz. Chief Editor of the International Scientific Journal “Ecohydrology & Hydrobiology”.
From mid-80’s he has been a coordinator of the International Scientific Programmes and Working Groups in UNESCO, FAO, UNEP. Recently he represents Poland in European Commission — European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and Joint Programming Initiative.